


Evermore

by yourviolentlackofvirtue



Category: La Divina Commedia | The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri, The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 02:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8427940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourviolentlackofvirtue/pseuds/yourviolentlackofvirtue
Summary: There was Lenore. Then there was nothing. Then, finally, there was The Raven.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a uni assignment where we had to creatively reimagine a famous text. I chose 'The Raven' and 'The Divine Comedy' and tried to recreate elements of each poem in the short story medium while also keeping some poetic elements and formatting. This was the result and I actually kind if liked it so I thought I'd post it. Enjoy!

_There was Lenore. Then there was nothing. Then, finally, there was The Raven._

** Lenore **

The last few months of Lenore’s life had been worse than any torture she could have ever imagined. Everything caused her frail body pain; she couldn’t walk up the stairs to her own bed, and the day lounge that acted as a substitute put stress on her already aching bones and joints. She could not cook, could not clean, she could not draw – slowly her illness was taking away more than just her health, it was taking away the very things by which she defined herself.

Perhaps the worst thing though, the thing that kept her awake longer than her uncomfortable sleeping quarters ever could, was the way she had to watch her illness take away the life of the man she loved. The debilitating nature of her ailment took its toll on her body, but it wreaked havoc on his soul. In case she needed any reminder, the path from health to the end played itself out on his face, like he suffered the same as she did but he didn’t have the promise of death to get him through the worst of it.

Her dear Roderick, dying before his time because of his love for her.

Her dear Roderick.

They had met when they were just children and fallen in love not long after. Of course they didn’t know that at the time, it wasn’t until late into their teen years that they realised their longing glances and fleeting touches spoke more to lovers than friends. It was a small town, with few other suitable options – their parents were thrilled.

Their life together was quaint. A large, secluded house in the countryside. A comfortable existence rarely encroached upon by the outside world. What others felt was isolation they called bliss.

Lenore’s illness was the first bad thing to happen to them.

It was a year and a half worth of missed symptoms. The fatigue that kept her in bed late, and the pain in her chest that kept her up at night. The cough that would plague her for days and then disappear for weeks – getting worse each and every reoccurrence. The fragility; bruises from brushing against the post of the bed, the ache in her hands from trying to hold a pencil. The appetite increase, and her weight loss. Her disease was a series of contradictions that they both overlooked until it was too late.

Through it all there was Roderick.

Always Roderick.

Her darling husband spent the last weeks of Lenore’s life doting on her hand and foot, indulging her every whim. If she mentioned in passing that she was cold she would have tea and more blankets within minutes. If the light was hurting her eyes every curtain in the house would be shut. He even attempted to draw for her when she couldn’t hold the pencil to capture the decaying tree in the backyard in lead and charcoal.

The only thing Roderick feared more than Lenore’s death in those weeks was the thought of disappointing her with so little time left.

Lenore had never put much stock in faith. Her parents weren’t religious people and neither were their parents before them. Lenore had never been discouraged from forming her own beliefs but she hadn’t thought about it much.

She had a lot of time to think while she was dying.

Roderick used to consider himself a Catholic, but the nearest church was a town over and since they’d moved into their home neither of them had attended a service. Lenore wasn’t sure if she believed in a god, or God, or Gods but with her end approaching she found herself hoping. She whispered what she thought were prayers to empty rooms and dared to dream of a life after death; a life where Roderick would one day join her and they could spend eons together.

The harder it became for her to breathe the more she wished for; endless summer, a studio for her to work on her drawings, an eternal and everlasting utopia devoid of the pain and suffering of mortal life.

She’d never believed it would be –

 

 

** Nothing **

****

_‘All hope abandon, ye who enter in.’_

Her senses came back to her one at a time, each one adding to the already overwhelming cacophony. Each one confirming what she’d suspected from the moment her heart stuttered to a stop – confirming what she refused to believe.

There might have been a heaven after all, but whatever this was wasn’t it.

Out in front of her was a great lake, or what looked like a lake. It was never ending and, unless her eyes were deceiving her, what should have been water seemed much too thick. The waves didn’t so much brush the shore as attack it, smashing into the rock again and again eroding it ever so slightly more with each battering.

That lake, the water that wasn’t water, should have been the worst part but Lenore had to suppress a scream of horror when she took notice of the people waiting on the shore. Hundreds of them, thousands – she couldn’t be sure; they all stood in lines. Their empty gazes fixed on the lake. Their hands hanging limp by their sides as their shoulders and heads slumped forward in defeat or sadness or some other by-product of grief and time. Their clothes, shredded beyond repair, more and more decayed the closer they were to the lake – to the front of the line – blood coating their bodies instead.

The most horrific part was the way their skin sagged like it longed to be rid of the bodies it had no desire to protect anymore. It seemed to drip from their fingertips. Sinew and flesh collecting in piles on the ground below them – sticking to the bottom of their feet as they ambled forwards; collecting under toenails and in the dips between toes.

When her hearing returned to her Lenore realised that she hadn’t been able to dampen down the scream that had crawled up her throat after all, she just hadn’t been able to hear her own desperate wails.

The voices of the damned echoed all around her. Sighs, complaints, ululations. Some of their cries she understood, others were in languages she’d never heard before but, despite that, their pain, and loss, and humiliation were familiar to her. Accents of anger, betrayal, and agony coloured the tumult. The lake seemed to scream with them.

Lenore dropped to her knees and retched, her whole body convulsing as she attempted to rid her already empty stomach of its contents. The bile that spilt from her mouth did little to soothe her roiling stomach as she was forced to take in another lungful of the putrid air.

It smelt like rotting flesh and burning hair and death.

_More than anything, it smelt like death._

She got to her feet and scrubbed a hand across her mouth to try and remove the last of the vomit clinging to her lips and chin; but when she pulled her hand back it was covered in pus and blood and chunks of skin. Her face burned. As Lenore attempted to wipe the gore off onto the skirt of her dress it just tore the skin of her palm to shreds, exposing muscle and bone underneath.

When she looked up she realised she’d been ~~pushed~~ , ~~forced~~ , merged into one of the lines, and she was getting closer and closer to the lake.

Time passed differently where she was. It moved in bursts and fits, dragging on endlessly and moving too fast for her to comprehend all at the same time. She could have spent days, weeks, years, lifetimes waiting for that boat, but she had no way to know. Maybe time didn’t exist at all in this place.

Eventually she reached the front of the line and eventually the boat came for her.

At the helm was a disgusting thing that was neither human nor animal but some sick combination of the two. Not half and half like the monsters of legend, but a grotesque mistake of anatomy too hideous to look at and too impossible to describe. To pay it any attention felt like a crime, but to ignore it would be impossible.

The boat didn’t sail through the water so much as on top of it. It went undisturbed by the churning waves and, while they moved along, Lenore observed those impossible inky waves and allowed her mind to wander.

 

_What had she done to deserve this fate?_

_It had to be a mistake, didn’t it?_

_Would the torment end once she reached the other side of the lake?_

_How long had she been there?_

_When had her terrified screams become hysterical laughter?_

 

Without any plan or deliberation she climbed over the edge of the boat and plunged into the not-quite-water below.

Lenore had never before experienced black so vividly – so entirely. In this place it was more than a colour, it was a state of being. The darkness was so complete that the mere thought of even a morsel of light being able to infiltrate it seemed like a fanciful dream. It was everywhere and nowhere all at once; a physical presence that started just at the tips of her fingers. Lenore could feel it in her lungs – thick and horrible.

It tasted like emptiness

              like the moments right after a fire is extinguished

              like panic in the back of your throat when your foot misses a step

              like d a m n a t i o n.

~~It tasted like eternity.~~

Everything existed at once; her past, the present, a future she’d never have.

A life with Roderick.

A nightmare of flesh, and fire, and pain.

A world ruled by technology more complex than anything she could have ever imagined while she was alive.

All of time was playing out in a single moment – impossible and beautiful and terrifying all the same. Too much and not enough.

It was pulling her in a thousand different directions and in that moment she wanted to be destroyed – to be taken apart by this place, this _thing_ , that she had no words or even fragments of thought to describe. It was both living and dead and it was so much stronger than her.

But this had been her decision and she refused to lose herself to it.

She was Lenore.

                        She _was_ Lenore.

                                                _She was,_

                                                            **She was,**

                                                                        She was…

  

 

** The Raven **

****

The Raven was to Lenore as a butterfly was to a caterpillar. She had been and now it was. In essence they were the same, but they could not exist simultaneously. Lenore was the before, the Raven was the after – two vessels for a singular soul, bound together but cursed to exist as separate entities.

The Raven remembered Lenore’s life much in the same way one remembers a dream after waking – parts of it were so clear, so tangible, that it seemed impossible that any other reality was possible yet others were a jumbled mess. Most of it didn’t make sense; emotions were misplaced and they tainted memories they didn’t belong to, faces didn’t match up with names, places didn’t exist in physical locations but rather in little pockets that could be accessed through a thought.

The Raven found itself at a country manor that looked like it would have been a grand building if time and neglect had not had it’s way with it.

It stood well away from the road and was a decent walk from the nearest town, private in a way that most people would hate. The garden was overgrown with weeds and the dying remnants of flowers planted years ago – the strongest of them clinging to the bottom of the walls of the building but wilting long before they could develop into a second skin made of vine. Each of the windows and walls were caked in their very own layers of dust and dirt, changing it from its original cream to a dull and muted grey.

The sorry state of the house was nothing compared to that of its sole inhabitant. As The Raven surveyed the strange establishment to which it had been drawn, it saw through one of the dirty windows a man wandering the halls despite the late hour. There was a book in his hands but his eyes were unfocused – his feet pulling him through the empty halls without any conscious decision on his part.

Something about him was familiar to ~~Lenore~~ The Raven, a face it couldn’t quite place but still knew. The Raven, somewhere in its fragmented memory and consciousness, understood this man had meant something to Lenore at one point but the bird couldn’t figure out what. A voice in the deep recesses of its mind screamed ‘Roderick’. A series of images flashed before The Raven and along with them came blinding hatred so much stronger than anything it had ever experienced.

The hatred was so pure and encompassing that The Raven didn’t even question it – something that powerful had to be real.

It swooped towards the nearest window and crashed into it. A small chip appeared in the glass and the inhabitant, Roderick – who ever he was – didn’t even flinch. As he shuffled down the hall and into another room The Raven once again flew at the window, taking care to aim for the crack, and that time it broke clean through the weakened pane.

If the shattered glass did any damage to its body, The Raven didn’t notice – its focus solely on finding and tormenting the man. It followed the sounds of his muttered words and the slow drag of his shoes on the carpet and found him in what would probably have been a small library if it had more than a handful of books stacked on it’s shelves.

The man had opened the door when he heard The Raven tapping, but his narrow expectation of what should have been waiting for him on the other side of it meant he didn’t notice as the bird glided into the room. The man reclaimed his seat in front of the dying flames in the fireplace and returned to the book he had been ignoring in the hall.

The Raven felt another surge of rage and flew through the room, rustling the dark purple curtains that were drawn shut against the moonlight. The unusual movement caught the man’s attention and he took to looking around the room for the source. It was a few moments of searching and muttering under his breath before he heaved a sigh.

‘Lenore?’ He asked, his tone dripping with grief, loss, and the tiniest glimmer of hope.

‘Lenore,’ The Raven mocked.

It flew by the man’s head, one of its wings clipping his cheek as it skated past, before stopping to rest on a bust of Pallas. He looked amused as he watched The Raven stake its claim on the bust, and once it was settled the strange, infuriating man asked the Raven its name.

~~The same voice from before shouted, ‘Lenore!’~~

The Raven replied, ‘Nevermore.’

The man shook his head, muttering that he must have imagined the animal speaking to him.

Despite the obvious mental instability that had prompted the man to speak to a creature that shouldn’t have been able to respond, he did look adequately distressed to hear The Raven ~~speak~~ squawk again.

‘Nevermore.’

He turned his seat to face The Raven and startled slightly when he noticed the intense way the black eyes of The Raven bore into him. The man reclined further into the chair. The Raven didn’t move.

Suddenly the man shot up from his chair, bellowing with his face directed to the roof. He demanded to know if The Raven – ‘if bird or devil’ – was sent as a reminder of his lost love, of his Lenore. The roof offered no answer and the man turned his tirade on The Raven, accusing it of evil and demanding it leave.

Seeing the man descend into near lunacy because of its presence soothed The Raven’s hatred ever so slightly – some perverted form of revenge for an act it couldn’t recall to begin with.

It’s screeches of delight sounded strangely like laughter.

The Raven continued to repeat its one world refrain just so it could see the torment in the eyes of the man. He lashed out; throwing the few books he could reach though none of them even came close to knocking The Raven from its perch.

_Nevermore_

                                                 Nevermore

N e v e r m o r e             

**Nevermore**

_Nevermore_

**Nevermore**

                                                              Nevermore                  

N e v e r m o r e                                    

Birds don’t have to close their eyes to blink, and it is amazing what the human eye misses in those milliseconds. If The Raven had still been Lenore, it probably wouldn’t have seen the exact moment that Roderick snapped. If The Raven had still been Lenore, it probably wouldn’t have rejoiced in the undoing of a good man.


End file.
